Mr. Chair, I won't challenge you because I know the numbers that are sitting at the table, and that would be fruitless, but I would like to address some of the comments made by Ms. Mourani.
If we took her argument to its extent, we would bring everybody back, whether they applied or not, so that they would get the benefits here. But if they're not going to accept rehabilitation, treatment, and whatever may be required where they are, why would we expect that if we brought them back here they'd receive the benefits in Canada? We don't re-judge the case. We don't say, “Well, because we think you were mistreated or because you were wrongly convicted, we'll overturn the conviction”. That's not what happens with this process.
One of the criteria that surely Canadians would expect is that if we're going to bring back a percentage of Canadians who are incarcerated abroad, then they will have accepted treatment in other places. It's not the only criterion, but it is one of the criteria that the officials would look at, I'm sure, when they would make their recommendations to the minister.
We can talk about the totalitarian regimes in other countries, but there are many democratically elected regimes in countries around the world where these folks are applying, such as Great Britain, the United States, and others. So we shouldn't say that's not a consideration; in fact, that should be one of the considerations.
If you're going to use the argument that they come back to Canada for rehabilitation and treatment, it's pretty tough to say to Canadians that we're not going to take into account the fact that they've refused those treatments in other communities before they're brought back here. Everyone who is incarcerated in another country has been in that situation of incarceration for a while. They were just sentenced yesterday and then applied to come back.... They have to serve a portion of their sentence. So if treatment is part of the situation in that country, surely we should consider that when we say whether or not we want to tell those folks to come back to Canada.